The Telegraph - (London)
The Reverend Murray Rogers Obituary - (excerpted)
06 Dec 2006
The Reverend Murray Rogers, who has died aged 89, was an Anglican priest of infectious holiness who devoted almost 60 years to the encouragement of dialogue and co-operation between the adherents of the world's main religious faiths.
For 18 of these years, which he later described as the richest of his life, he lived... in a small religious community, modelled on a Hindu ashram, among the poorest of the poor in India.
Adopting a frugal way of life, existing on what they could grow and what visitors gave them, they devoted themselves to prayer, study and work. Eventually they came to exert considerable influence, not only among their Hindu neighbours, but also worldwide. When their work in India ended they moved to Jerusalem, then to Hong Kong and finally to Canada, before returning to England and a small flat in the grounds of an Oxford convent.
Charles Murray Rogers, the son of a successful stockbroker, was born at Croydon on May 16 1917. While at Whitgift School he was converted to the Christian faith and retained a godly impatience with the conventional life of the historic churches.
At Queen's College, Cambridge, he met CF Andrews — then the best-known Christian in India and a friend of Gandhi — and as a result went on to Westcott House, Cambridge, to prepare for Holy Orders and missionary work in India.
First, however, it was necessary to serve a curacy in England, which he did at St Andrew's Church, Plymouth; but by the time this ended wartime restrictions made it impossible for him and his wife, Mary, who also felt called to missionary work, to travel to India.
Instead he spent the years 1943 to 1946 on the headquarters staff of the Church Missionary Society in London until he and his young family were able to move to Khatauli, in the Lucknow district of north India.
After a short spell there as a missionary he was appointed chaplain of an agricultural institute at Allahabad, where he remained for four years. But at this time, increasingly influenced by Gandhi, he came to believe that, even though his missionary pay was low, the gap between this and the incomes of the poverty-stricken Indians was too wide for him to be a credible preacher of the Christian message.
Rogers and his family therefore spent a year at Gandhi's ashram at Savagram before establishing, in 1954, their own Christian counterpart at the village of Kareli, in Uttar Pradesh. They called this Jyotiniketan ("House of Light" in Hindi). Besides identifying with the local poor, they began to attract visitors from all parts of the world... who were interested in their spirituality.
Rogers also became a key member of a World Council of Churches group undertaking what was then pioneering work in inter-faith relations.
By 1971...he accepted an invitation from the Anglican Archbishop and the Mother of a Russian Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem to establish an inter-faith centre in the Holy City.
This worked well for a time, but when Rogers, who always had a mind of his own, spoke out against what he perceived to be grave injustices suffered by Palestinians at the hands of Israelis he was accused of fostering disharmony, and in 1980 he was expelled from the country. The ashram now moved to Hong Kong, where for the next nine years it provided an inter-faith centre that encouraged greater understanding in that multi-religious community. Rogers himself developed close relations with Buddhists, to the great benefit of his own spirituality, he averred.
Next (and somewhat improbably, as it then seemed to many of his friends) the ashram moved to Canada for work among the Mohawk people of Deseronto in Ontario. This extended over almost 10 years — spirituality providing the bond — until (Jyotiniketan moved) to England to settle in the grounds of All Saints Convent, Oxford...
06 Dec 2006
The Reverend Murray Rogers, who has died aged 89, was an Anglican priest of infectious holiness who devoted almost 60 years to the encouragement of dialogue and co-operation between the adherents of the world's main religious faiths.
For 18 of these years, which he later described as the richest of his life, he lived... in a small religious community, modelled on a Hindu ashram, among the poorest of the poor in India.
Adopting a frugal way of life, existing on what they could grow and what visitors gave them, they devoted themselves to prayer, study and work. Eventually they came to exert considerable influence, not only among their Hindu neighbours, but also worldwide. When their work in India ended they moved to Jerusalem, then to Hong Kong and finally to Canada, before returning to England and a small flat in the grounds of an Oxford convent.
Charles Murray Rogers, the son of a successful stockbroker, was born at Croydon on May 16 1917. While at Whitgift School he was converted to the Christian faith and retained a godly impatience with the conventional life of the historic churches.
At Queen's College, Cambridge, he met CF Andrews — then the best-known Christian in India and a friend of Gandhi — and as a result went on to Westcott House, Cambridge, to prepare for Holy Orders and missionary work in India.
First, however, it was necessary to serve a curacy in England, which he did at St Andrew's Church, Plymouth; but by the time this ended wartime restrictions made it impossible for him and his wife, Mary, who also felt called to missionary work, to travel to India.
Instead he spent the years 1943 to 1946 on the headquarters staff of the Church Missionary Society in London until he and his young family were able to move to Khatauli, in the Lucknow district of north India.
After a short spell there as a missionary he was appointed chaplain of an agricultural institute at Allahabad, where he remained for four years. But at this time, increasingly influenced by Gandhi, he came to believe that, even though his missionary pay was low, the gap between this and the incomes of the poverty-stricken Indians was too wide for him to be a credible preacher of the Christian message.
Rogers and his family therefore spent a year at Gandhi's ashram at Savagram before establishing, in 1954, their own Christian counterpart at the village of Kareli, in Uttar Pradesh. They called this Jyotiniketan ("House of Light" in Hindi). Besides identifying with the local poor, they began to attract visitors from all parts of the world... who were interested in their spirituality.
Rogers also became a key member of a World Council of Churches group undertaking what was then pioneering work in inter-faith relations.
By 1971...he accepted an invitation from the Anglican Archbishop and the Mother of a Russian Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem to establish an inter-faith centre in the Holy City.
This worked well for a time, but when Rogers, who always had a mind of his own, spoke out against what he perceived to be grave injustices suffered by Palestinians at the hands of Israelis he was accused of fostering disharmony, and in 1980 he was expelled from the country. The ashram now moved to Hong Kong, where for the next nine years it provided an inter-faith centre that encouraged greater understanding in that multi-religious community. Rogers himself developed close relations with Buddhists, to the great benefit of his own spirituality, he averred.
Next (and somewhat improbably, as it then seemed to many of his friends) the ashram moved to Canada for work among the Mohawk people of Deseronto in Ontario. This extended over almost 10 years — spirituality providing the bond — until (Jyotiniketan moved) to England to settle in the grounds of All Saints Convent, Oxford...